Illusion Report

Perhaps at some point, she had unknowingly gone mad. Here, in the Nest’s grotesque reality, she was burning with one delirious, hallucinatory fever after another—otherwise, why would Mai Mingle feel as if something deep inside her skull had "fallen out"?

How could the depths of one’s skull, of one’s consciousness, "fall out" of the body?

Mai Mingle couldn’t explain it.

If a person could be divided into a "surface" and a "depth," then the moment she saw the face in the mirror, her "depth" was like a passenger sucked out of a plane when the cabin door was suddenly torn away, vanishing without a trace in an instant.

It was as if her entire self was now just a "surface," but even this "surface" had become a flimsy sheet of plastic, rustling and trembling, on the verge of collapse. And the transparent face, hurtling forward at high speed, was about to smash right into it.

Mai Mingle turned and ran.

She felt as if she had become a paper cutout, the points where her arms and legs met the surrounding space having grown narrow and thin.

With one stumbling step after another, she sliced through the bathroom’s frigid air and ran unsteadily down the corridor. ’The downstairs exit disappeared because I had to play hide-and-seek with Jones,’ she thought. ’So now that I’ve found Jones, will the exit reappear?’

The fire door she had pulled open earlier still stood wide open against the wall. Mai Mingle rushed to the doorway and saw a translucent face floating above a stairwell that had just appeared.

No, wait, she didn’t "see" it.

"Seeing" implies light reflecting off an object and entering the eye through the cornea. But the translucent face wasn’t in front of her eyes—it was behind Mai Mingle’s retinas.

Somehow, its location seemed to be connected directly to Mai Mingle’s retinas and brain.

From behind her retinas, the transparent face charged again and again toward her eyeballs, her very skin. Nerves, bones, eyes... everything throbbed with a swelling pain, as if it were all about to explode.

She couldn’t escape something behind her own retinas by fleeing down the stairs, but Mai Mingle hurled herself down them anyway. She moved with such speed and force that it wouldn’t have been surprising if she’d fallen and broken her neck.

The Kai Family

The name floated up in her mind for no reason, dragging a blood-dark shadow behind it.

’If I have to die,’ Mai Mingle thought, ’I’d rather fall and break my neck on these stairs than let another face smash my own to pieces and squeeze its way out from the ruins of my skull.’

She bolted down the stairs, rounded a landing, threw herself down the next flight, and rounded another landing.

She wasn’t sure if it was just her imagination, but it seemed that the longer she ran and the deeper she descended, the less her eyes throbbed with that swelling pain. ’Could it be that the connection point with the transparent face was back on the third floor?’

It seemed that as Mai Mingle ran down flight after flight of stairs, the face grew more and more distant.

But...

’Aren’t these stairs a little too long?’

’How many floors does this building even have?’

After one flight there was another, and after every landing, there was always another flight of stairs stretching downward.

Looking up, the stairs spiraled endlessly, disappearing into a leaden gray expanse of concrete. Looking down, they descended flight by flight, plunging into a hazy abyss.

Everywhere she looked, there was nothing but the same lead-gray concrete and iron railings. Mai Mingle felt as if she were running down a monotonous, endlessly flowing waterfall of concrete. She ran and ran until time itself blurred, and she lost all track of how long it had been.

Panting, she came down the steps and stopped on a landing, collapsing to the floor with a THUD.

The translucent face seemed to have disappeared, or perhaps it just couldn’t reach her for the moment.

’Even though I escaped the third floor, I seem to have fallen into an even worse predicament... Even if that translucent face is gone, I doubt I can get back up there, can I?’

Mai Mingle tilted her head up, looking at the endless concrete above, not even knowing where the "third floor" was—no matter how she looked or where she looked, she was already far past where the "third floor" should have been.

’There should be doors in the stairwell leading to the other floors...’

Mai Mingle rested for a few minutes, then dragged her legs—which felt as heavy as if they were being filled with concrete—and spent a while knocking and tapping on the walls. ’Alright, no secret doors.’ None on the next level down, either.

After descending who knows how many more floors, she pulled out her phone and checked the time.

Only ten minutes left until mission failure.

’One obstacle after another. The residents of the Nest have completely abandoned any pretense of ’fairness.’ At this point, I don’t even know if I’ll make it out alive, let alone join the Kai Family.’

’If I fail the interview, I won’t get the lipstick back. If I don’t get the lipstick back, I can’t get the Illusion Report...’ One bad outcome led to another, crashing down on her like an avalanche.

Mai Mingle buried her face in her hands and gave herself one minute. She let all her anxiety, worry, fear, self-blame, and regret well up. She let the tears come freely. But only for one minute.

In life, everyone is bound to be intimidated and tormented by the unknown, but you can only give it a minute at most.

Otherwise, it will think you’ve welcomed it, and it will make itself at home and refuse to leave.

One minute later, she wiped her face dry and stood up.

Mai Mingle descended step by step, not missing a single corner or detail this time.

Each flight of stairs had twelve steps, followed by a landing. A full turn, and then another twelve steps.

There were no floor markings. White lights were set into the ceilings of the landings, and that was it. Besides the light, there was also a green lightbox depicting a small figure and an arrow, with the words "Emergency Passage" written on it.

The lightbox was flush against the wall, and the arrow pointed to the wall opposite. ’Could the exit be inside the wall?’

Mai Mingle slammed her shoulder into the wall twice with all her might. The wall didn’t budge. She, however, let out a low cry as pain shot through her shoulder from the excessive force.

"...Did you hear that?"

From somewhere down the stairs, a few muffled words suddenly floated up.

Mai Mingle started, immediately lunging for the railing to look down. She was about to call out but stopped herself just in time.

’The speaker isn’t near the railing, so I can’t see them. Who knows if it’s one of the residents?’

"Sounds like a woman..." Another voice spoke up, much clearer this time, and even a little familiar.

"It can’t be a resident, can it," said the first voice—it was a woman, and it sounded like she was walking upstairs as she spoke, because her voice was getting clearer. "You wait here. In your condition, the less you move, the better. I’ll go check it out."

Mai Mingle quickly descended a few steps, peeked her head out again, and sure enough, saw the top of someone’s head.

The top half of the woman’s hair was tied in a bun, while the bottom half was buzzed short. She was one of the other Hunters from the interview. ’What was her name again?’

"Suo... Suo Beihua!" Mai Mingle called out. "Is that you?"

Suo Beihua looked up at the sound of her name, revealing a sharp, narrow face. In the endlessly spiraling stairwell, their gazes met.

"Who are you?"

Suo Beihua was startled, and with a flick of her wrist, she drew a gun from her waist and aimed it at Mai Mingle, her movements so fast they left an afterimage. "Don’t move. Are you a resident?"

’Suo Beihua has a terrible memory—’

Before the thought could even finish, Mai Mingle suddenly understood.

She didn’t know why it took her until now to clearly see Suo Beihua’s lower body—the other woman wasn’t walking up the stairs step by step; she was "slithering" up.

From the waist down, Suo Beihua’s legs were gone. In their place was a long, thick, rounded, blue-green snake’s tail that stretched all the way down, its tip disappearing around the next landing.

’That’s right, our forms change after we enter...’

What Mai Mingle hadn’t expected was that when they met face-to-face, they would actually see each other’s Nest-altered forms with their own eyes.

In other words, Suo Beihua was looking at a person with a mirror where their head should be. No wonder her first reaction was to pull a gun.

"Wait, I’m not a resident," she immediately raised her hands and said. "I’m Mai Mingle, we came in for the interview together. Look at my orange name tag—and I have a gun at my waist, too."

Suo Beihua squinted, then hesitantly lowered her gun.

"You haven’t gotten out yet, either?"

Even though she had only run into another interviewee—not even a real companion—and was still far from escaping, Mai Mingle couldn’t help but feel a wave of relief, as if she’d just been saved.

"I thought I was the only one trapped in this stairwell, I had no idea what to do," she couldn’t contain her excitement, quickly walking down the stairs and asking, "Do you know what’s going on with this stairwell? How long have you been trapped here?"

Seen up close, Suo Beihua’s snake tail was even more astounding. She looked like a creature from mythology, or a lamia from a folktale.

’If she stood upright on the tip of her tail, Suo Beihua would have to be at least three meters tall, right?’

’We were both transformed, so how come her new form is so imposing?’

"I got here about seven or eight minutes ago, after clearing the second-floor trial. I assume you’re like me, constantly going down but never reaching the end." Suo Beihua lifted her sharp chin, gesturing downstairs. "Besides me, Robert is also trapped here."

So that male voice was Robert.

"Is he hurt?" Mai Mingle asked.

A very peculiar look crossed Suo Beihua’s face. She looked as if she wanted to say something but then thought better of it.

"...No."

Mai Mingle was more confused by Suo Beihua’s expression than by the fact that Robert was staying put. "I heard you tell him to stay where he was and not move..."

Suo Beihua seemed to be wrestling with a thought, trying to keep it from slipping out of her mouth.

"Yes, I said the less he moves, the better."

’What’s the difference?’

"You’ll know when you go down and see for yourself. Let’s go."

Suo Beihua turned. Her snake tail, seemingly with a life of its own, coiled on the stairs with a soft, scraping sound, its scales glinting with a faint green sheen. "Perfect timing. We can discuss how to get out of here."

"Oh, right," Suo Beihua suddenly turned her head back and added in a whisper, "When you see Robert, don’t stare, and don’t laugh. Whatever you do, don’t laugh. He’ll fly into a rage on the spot."

...Why would I laugh?